18 deaths a week in Wales linked to A&E waits — and the figure is rising
An estimated 965 people in Wales died last year in circumstances linked to waiting 12 hours or more in an emergency department, up 29 on 2024 and the equivalent of 18 deaths every week, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
The figure comes from the RCEM’s State of Emergency Medicine in Wales report, published on Tuesday, the same day Wales held its final Senedd plenary before the 7 May election.
The RCEM describes the estimate as conservative. It applies specifically to admitted patients who waited 12 hours or more before being transferred from an emergency department to a hospital bed.
The report sets out the scale of the problem in stark terms. In 2025, 122,166 people waited 12 hours or longer in major emergency departments across Wales.
That is the second highest annual total on record and means one in every seven attendances resulted in a 12-hour-plus wait. A decade ago, in 2015, the figure was one in 32.
Four-hour performance hit its worst level ever recorded in 2025.
The target requires 95 per cent of patients to be seen, treated and either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. Only 54 per cent met that standard.
In total, 367,595 people waited four hours or more, a number the RCEM said was equivalent to the entire population of Cardiff.
Key figures: Welsh emergency departments 2025
54% achieved — worst on record
Target: 95%
| Waited 12 hours or more | 122,166 |
| 1 in 7 attendances (was 1 in 32 in 2015) | 2nd highest ever |
| Waited 4 hours or more | 367,595 |
| Estimated deaths linked to 12-hour waits | 965 |
| Average deaths per week (estimate) | 18 |
| Patients in non-designated spaces (Feb snapshot) | 97 of 304 |
Source: RCEM State of Emergency Medicine in Wales 2025. Deaths figure is a conservative estimate based on admitted patients waiting 12+ hours. All ED statistics from Stats Wales.
The RCEM carried out a snapshot of conditions on a Monday morning in February 2026 across all 12 major emergency departments in Wales.
It found 304 patients waiting for an inpatient bed. Of those, 97, nearly a third, were being treated in non-designated spaces: corridors, cupboards and waiting room chairs. Two patients had been in an emergency department for five days.
Staff described what they were dealing with. One told the RCEM: “We are leaving people in chairs for nearly 30 hours waiting for a bed. We can’t treat people like this.” Another described the structural pressure on departments: “The ED holds all the risk at times of escalation. We are only unit not allowed to shut.”
Dr Iona Collins, chair of the BMA’s Welsh Council, responded to the report: “Nearly 1,000 deaths in Wales linked to people waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments represents a profound failure of the system and an unimaginable loss for families. Treating people in corridors, waiting areas or chairs is undignified, unsafe and unacceptable. These deaths were not inevitable and with appropriate investment, those with the will to stop this can do so.”
The Welsh Government disputed the figures. A spokesperson said long stays in emergency departments can be associated with poorer outcomes, particularly for older or complex patients, but described the RCEM’s numbers as estimates based on modelling from a single academic study applied to Welsh data.
The report was raised in the Senedd on Tuesday. Darren Millar MS (Conservative, Clwyd West) told First Minister Eluned Morgan that people were “dying in our emergency departments because they’re not getting treated quickly enough” and described Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which runs Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and Wrexham Maelor Hospital, as having been in special measures and intervention longer than any other NHS organisation in the history of the health service in the United Kingdom. Ms Morgan said things were “improving, even in north Wales.”
The RCEM is calling on every party contesting the 7 May election to commit to eradicating deaths linked to long waits by the end of the decade and to ending the treatment of patients in non-designated spaces.
A patient’s account of their treatment for meningitis at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, read into the Senedd record on Tuesday, is covered in a separate report.
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